Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

Mastering the “Yes – And” Sales Improv Framework Ever been caught flatfooted when a buyer throws an unexpected objection at you? It turns out that improv can help you handle it and increase sales. On this Sales Gravy Podcast episode, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Gina Trimarco engage in a fun discussion on how to increase sales with improv. You’ll learn how developing the same skills comedians and actors use on stage, can help you in front of buyers during sales conversations. Improv is the art of off-the-cuff, un-scripted comedy in which the actors respond to cues from each other rather than reading from a set script. The most important keys to effective improv are listening, accepting, and leveraging the “yes-and” framework. Sales improv helps you increase sales by: Becoming more confident Being present and in the moment Building sales conversation organically Asking better questions Being a better listener Keeping buyers engaged Detaching from outcomes During the podcast, Jeb and Gina demonstrate the “Yes-And” improv framework and Jeb fails miserably. The good news is the “yes-and” improv motion is easy to learn with practice. Mastering this framework is the key to increasing sales with improv. Gina also shares her inspiring entrepreneurial story about how she built her sales improv training business. Gina combines street smarts and improv comedy skills with her experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds to teach sales professionals improv techniques.

Starting a B2B Podcast is a Smart Virtual Selling Strategy On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and James Carbary (Content-Based Networking) discuss how starting a B2B podcast can elevate your personal brand and build familiarity. Familiarity Leads to Liking In Sales, familiarity is powerful because familiarity leads to liking. When people are familiar with you, the more likely they’ll be to engage on prospecting calls and feel comfortable with you on virtual sales calls. Familiarity is virtual selling lubrication. It takes the friction out of virtual communication and makes everything easier. The lack of familiarity is why you get so many objections. When people don’t know you, it’s much harder for them to trust you. To build familiarity, you must make a direct investment in improving the awareness of your name, expertise, and reputation. Starting a B2B podcast is such an investment and, one that will pay huge dividends. The Virtual Selling Book Virtual Selling is hot. Smoking hot! Because, to remain relevant and competitive sales professionals must learn how to engage prospects and close deals in a virtual environment. This is exactly why you need my new book Virtual Selling. In Virtual Selling I teach you exactly how to gain a powerful competitive edge and crush your competitors by leveraging virtual communication channels. Don’t walk, don’t wait, don’t hesitate. Go get Virtual Selling now. It is a run-away best seller for one simple reason. The techniques, tactics, and skills I teach you in Virtual Selling work.  

Open yourself up to new opportunities It’s difficult to see new possibilities during this crisis. It seems like we’ve been in this pandemic for years rather than months. Secretly, most of us have been living with the hope that the coronavirus pandemic would be over quickly and that we’d get back to normal. With the new surge in cases, what is becoming clear is that everything has changed, that there is no going back, and that the only thing we can count on is new possibilities. In Coronavirus Talk #8, I discuss why it is important that you shift your mindset now so that you are looking though the windshield rather than in the rear view mirror. Adapting to A New Reality The last time I came to you with a Coronavirus talk, it was way back in April. We were talking about gratitude. And a lot’s happened since April. One of the things that happened to me was that I wrote an entire book, an 85,000 word book on Virtual Selling. And it’s something that normally takes me 18 to 24 months. And I was able to focus my attention and get it done. This is one of the lessons that I’ve learned during coronavirus. There are all these new possibilities, different things that we can do. And I’ve heard a lot of people, very smart people, talk about how, even though it seems a little bleak right now, this coronavirus pandemic is going to launch an entire new wave of innovation and it’s making a lot of us think differently. I think I told you in a previous talk that I was rethinking in fact, a lot of my values, and it’s helped me, as a CEO, begin to transform my company, Sales Gravy, into a different company, and to grow faster. The reason that I’m back, because I really wasn’t planning on any more coronavirus talks, is because the coronavirus is back with a fury. We’re seeing cases popping up everywhere. Now we’re shutting things down again. There’s a little bit of panic. I think we’re looking at some stiff economic headwinds if we don’t get this under control. Everything Has Changed, Especially in Sales And a lot of folks who were thinking that we were going to get back to normal are now faced with the truth, that there is not going to be a “back to normal.” Everything has changed and it will continue to change. And it’s no different than what happened to us after 9/11. After 9/11, we were expecting things to go back to normal and they never really did. We’ve traveled again and we continued on with our lives, but security never changed in airports. And the way that we looked at the world, it was always jaded after that moment. Now, I’m not saying that the coronavirus caused us to look at the world with a jaded view. I think it’s going to, like I said, open up new possibilities. And I think for all of the folks who were holding on to the hope that we will go back to normal, I think right now you’re getting a massive wake up call, in particular with salespeople. Differentiate with Virtual Selling Because if you’re in sales, you know that everything has changed and it is not going back. If you want to be relevant, if you want to be competitive, if you want to differentiate, you have to learn how to sell differently, which means you have to adopt new tools, which means you have to become good at virtual selling, and you have to do it now. That is a fact. Look, I’ll admit that I was like a lot of folks. I believed that this would be over quickly. I wrote a book called Virtual Selling, expecting that it would have a short life cycle that it wouldn’t live very long because people would get back to what we were doing before and back to normal. And now you can see, as the cases have picked up and as we are really coming to grips with the fact that we’re in this for the long haul, that the truth is, is virtual selling is the way that we’re going to move forward. Rise to the Occasion But here’s the good news– and we’re getting this in from everywhere across industries, the size of companies, in different countries, everywhere– we’re hearing over and over and over again about sales professionals and companies, including my company, who have had the best months, best quarters of their entire history in sales. They’re crushing records. My company’s had three months in a row of record sales at a time when I truly believed that we would be in deep trouble. And what we’re finding is that virtual selling has made us more productive. We’re able to have more conversations, talk to more people. We’re able to accelerate sales cycles. We’re able to connect with people when we weren’t able to connect with people before, because virtual selling makes it easy. What does this mean? Well, it means that the coronavirus pandemic has been transformative for the sales profession. It has made us better. And salespeople everywhere are improving their skills and they’re making more money because they rose to the occasion. This in fact is the lesson that I hope to teach you in this coronavirus talk. You have a choice, you can change your mindset and you can open yourself up to all the new possibilities. You can create a new vision for yourself. Or you can look backwards and hope that things will go back to the way they were before. You can see the world as a dark place with no hope. That’s a choice. And if you look at the world with new eyes and you see those possibilities, you never know which one of those possibilities that you might capture, that could change everything for you and your family. Create a Vision So here’s my challenge to you: What I want you to do is peel away some time to just sit quietly in silence. Turn everything off, no phone or devices. It’s okay to have a pen and a piece of paper if you want to take some notes. And I want you to sit and think about all of the possibilities for your career, for your life, for your family, for your business, even for your community, and your country. And I want you in that moment to begin the process of sketching a new vision for yourself, who you’re going to be, what you’re going to be, what makes you happy? Where do you want to go? This is Just the Beginning Now, this doesn’t have to be big and audacious. This can be small. It can be incremental. The exercise itself is just a starting point. It’s a beginning, it’s a shifting of your mindset. It is getting you to start looking out of the windshield to the road ahead of you versus staring in the rearview mirror and looking at what’s behind you. And in that moment, you will begin to transform because you will see that there are tons of new possibilities that lie before you. I mentioned my brand new book, Virtual Selling, and you can pick it up right now at Amazon, iBooks, at GooglePlay, or wherever books are sold. More Coronavirus Talk Episodes for New Possibilities: Prospecting Coronavirus Talk #1 Excuses Coronavirus Talk #2 The Gift of Time Coronavirus Talk #3 Confusion Coronavirus Talk #4 Fear and Worry Coronavirus Talk #5 On Mourning Coronavirus Talk #6 Gratitude Coronavirus Talk #7 Find out for yourself why more than 10,000 people have already enrolled in the Selling in a Crisis course. In this comprehensive course, you’ll learn the techniques and mindsets required to navigate and sell effectively in the current economic crisis.

Shifting Initial Sales Meetings From Face to Face to Video Calls One of the most effective points in the sales process to leverage video sales calls and virtual selling skills is the initial meeting. The initial meeting is first step in the sales process. It is the appointment you (or your sales development rep) set during outbound prospecting or from an inbound lead. The objective of the initial sales meeting (often the first step in the discovery process) is three-fold: Make a great first impression and develop an early emotional connection with the stakeholder(s) Fully qualify the opportunity to determine if it makes sense for you to move to the next step with the prospect. Generate enough interest with the stakeholder(s) to motivate them to advance to the next step in the sales process. Effective Initial Meetings An effective initial meeting should be about 30 minutes in length and no more than sixty. Your primary goal is to close for the next meeting (based on the complexity and length of your sales cycle). discovery demo presentation In situations where the opportunity is not a good fit, poorly qualified, or the timing is wrong, you’ll want to walk away. Sometimes the stakeholders will not have enough interest to move forward and won’t set the next meeting with you. I disqualify between 30% and 50% of prospects on initial meetings and never move forward with the next step. For example: If you conduct ten initial meetings over the course of a week, about half will advance to the next step. Depending on your closing ratio, 1-2 of those will move on to closed/won. Of course, some delusional salespeople throw proposals at every prospect, regardless of qualification. This is a terrible drain on productivity and a waste of resources. Video Sales Calls are More Efficient for Initial Meetings A good field rep can handle no more than ten face to face, initial meetings per week and still have time for other important sales activities such as prospecting, discovery calls, follow-ups, and presentations. Most reps never even get close to ten a week. There just isn’t enough time in the day to do more. Driving to initial meetings, and other sales calls eats up the day. But, that all changes when sales reps cut out the windshield time and shift initial meetings from in-person to video. There are four benefits to shifting initial meetings to video sales calls: You’ll increase the number of initial meetings you can conduct a week, which increases the number of new opportunities advancing through your pipeline, which in turn increases the number of deals you close. Because video sales calls tend to be shorter than in-person calls and you eliminate drive time, you immediately become more efficient. You’ll face fewer prospecting objections. More prospects will agree to meet with you because a short video call (to determine if it makes sense to work together) is easier for them consume and lowers their risk of wasting time with you. Reduced travel costs. In Modern Sales, Speed Matters For many field salespeople, the idea of conducting initial meetings via video, rather than in-person, seems un-imaginable. There is no doubt that in-person communication is more effective. However, the efficiency you gain by shifting initial meetings to video sales calls more than makes up for not being there face to face. You’ll be able to conduct far more initial meetings, resulting in a bigger pipeline, and more sales. The good news is video sales calls, are the closest facsimile to being there in person. Done well, they open the door to deeper relationships, understanding, emotional connections and trust. In modern sales, speed matters. Blending virtual selling into your sales process makes you more agile. This allows you to move faster, become more productive, and shorten the sales cycle. Learn more about virtual selling and improve your virtual sales skills with Jeb Blount’s blockbuster bestseller: Virtual Selling: A Quick-Start Guide to Leveraging Video, Technology, and Virtual Communication Channels to Engage Remote Buyers and Close Deals Fast

On part five of this Sales Gravy podcast series on sleep and sales performance, Jeb Blount (author of Sales EQ) and Jeff Kahn (CEO of Rise Science) discuss how sleep can help you deliver better sales presentations. You’ll learn the same technique that Jeff uses to help athletes lock in practice, improve memory, and reach peak performance. More Episodes of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part One of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part Two of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part Three of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part Four of Sleep and Sales Performance

On part four of this Sales Gravy podcast series on sleep and sales performance, Jeb Blount (author of Sales EQ) and Jeff Kahn (CEO of Rise Science) discuss the two laws of sleep. Jeb and Jeff explore: Sleep Debt Circadian Rhythm Sleep Procrastination Techniques for battling insomnia More Episodes of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part One of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part Two of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part Three of Sleep and Sales Performance

In part three of this Sales Gravy podcast series, Jeb Blount (author of Sales EQ) and Jeff Kahn (CEO of Rise Science) discuss the bad things that happen to you when you don’t get enough sleep, and how sleep impacts sales performance. Scientists have been studying sleep and health for over 100 years. They have proven that without enough sleep your health, motivation, passion, and cognitive abilities deteriorate. The good news is you can instantly feel and perform better by simply getting enough sleep. Listen to Part One of Sleep and Sales Performance Listen to Part Two of Sleep and Sales Performance

On part two of this Sales Gravy podcast series on sleep and sales performance, Jeb Blount (author of Sales EQ) and Jeff Kahn (CEO of Rise Science) discuss the impact of sleep on emotional intelligence and positive mindset. You will be surprised to learn that the lack of sleep makes it more difficult: to control your emotions perceive the emotions of others effectively manage sales meetings build relationships Jeff says that walking into a sales meeting without enough sleep is the same as going in drunk. You’ll learn that the sleep you get tonight is the beginning of your performance tomorrow. Listen to Part One of Sleep and Sales Performance

On part one of this Sales Gravy podcast series on sleep and sales performance, Jeb Blount (author of Sales EQ) and Jeff Kahn (CEO of Rise Science) discuss how sleep impacts sales performance. Listen to Part Two of Sleep and Sales Performance

In every sales conversation, the person who exerts the greatest emotional control has the highest probability of gaining the outcome they desire.